Allison: Rain could confuse the issue

According to James Allison, the Lotus E20s of Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean should be able to shine on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, for the 12th meeting of this 2012 season of the world championship of Formula 1. A legitimate confidence for the Briton, who could however see his plans thwarted by the Belgian climate.

« If the weather is dry, Spa falls into the category of circuits on which we are most confident. So we are all impatient to go, he confides. If it rains, the question is very open. Not just for us, but for all the teams. It rains very often in Spa, so we need to be prepared for it. This season we have had mixed experiences in the wet, with hostile weather often showing up in qualifying. At Silverstone it was fine, but in Germany we struggled to get the tires up to operating temperature. If this situation occurs again at Spa, the nature of the curves and the load on the tires should be enough to generate enough heat in the rubber. So we are not outrageously worried. We would prefer a dry weekend, but we should be competitive whatever the weather. »

For this season, Lotus has been experimenting with new development methods to prepare for next year's car while remaining focused on the Lotus E20. “ We have structured the development of this year's car and next year's car differently to result in more than double the development of the current car after the factory closure period. This end-of-season freedom has been ensured by running a more intense and earlier development program for next year's car. I hope this approach will pay dividends for the development of both cars. The E20 has certainly not regressed compared to the competition and next year's car looks promising at this stage. »